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LOYAL PUBLICATION SOCIETY, 

863 BROADWAY. 



Wo. 38. 



LETTERS 



ON OUR 



NATIONAL STRUGGLE, 

BY 

BRIG.-GEN. THOS, FRANCIS MEAGHER. 



Addressed to the Editors of the Dublin " Irishman" and " Citizen." 



To the Editor of the Dublin Citizen : 

New York, Sept. 26, 1863. 

My Dear Sir, — I have been in debt to you for a long, long 
time. You have sent me your paper constantly, and have 
written to me frequently. Up to this you have not had from 
me one word of acknowledgment and thanks. True it is, I 
have been on the point of dropping you a line, saying how 
gladly and gratefully I received these evidences of your re- 
membrance ; but ever and always, something or other inter- 
vened, and I had to throw aside pen, ink and paper, and with 
them my good intentions in your regard. 

This was invariably the case for the last two years or more ; 
camp life being anything but conducive to the maintenance of 
friendly relations, so far as they depend on the interchange of 
envelopes and postage stamps. 

Strange to say, however, the Dublin Citizen used to make its 
way to me across the ocean, down to Washington, over the 









2 



>3 

M^2 



Potomac, into the heart of Virginia. Many a pleasant hour it 
brought me, in the midst of the cares, worryings, hardships, and 
hard knocks of a campaign. It gratifies me truly to find that 
you had taken your stand against the Disunionists of America, 
and were true and staunch to the Stars and Stripes, and to all 
of the past, and all of the future, they so grandly symbolize. 

But you, who were here for so long a time, and had studied 
and familiarized yourself so thoroughly with the political ques- 
tions and parties of the Republic, know well how to discrimin- 
ate between the unjustified and treacherous revolt of the South 
and the revolutions which, in Europe, aim to shake off, not 
sworn alliances and sacred compacts, but mastership and dom- 
ination, the grasp of the strong, the assumption of the arrogant, 
all the violence, wrongs and burthens heaped upon the weaker 
by the more powerful. 

You had seen and learned enough during your stay in this 
county, to know that it was against the spirit and institutions 
of Democracy — against the freedom and nobility of labor, and 
all that was most humane, promising, and progressive in the 
Republic, that the territorial oligarchy of the South rebelled. 

Not independence, but domination, was the inspiration and 
purpose of the rebellion of the Slave Lords, the kings and 
princes of the cotton-fields and rice-swamps. To achieve this 
ascendancy, the disruption of the American Union was essen- 
tial. Hence the seizure of the Federal custom-houses, forts, 
barracks, munitions and ships of war, the expulsion of Federal 
officers, the rejection of the Federal authority, wherever force 
or fraud could effect the same in those uneasy States, where the 
slavery of the black man constituted the basis of wealth, of 
social consequence, and political power. 

You remember how galling it was to us, whilst writing and 
speaking in favor of Democracy, and the liberty and new order 
of manhood the Republic guaranteed, silently to submit to the 
requirements of the National compact which compelled even 
the most ardent friends of human freedom to be in a great mea- 
sure the accomplices of that thralldom which was the cancerous 
disease, as it was the glaring disgrace, of this great nation, and 
a violent contradiction of the principles ou which it was estab- 
lished. I cannot forget my friend, Mr. Smith O'Brien, asking 



me, more than once during his visit to this country, how it was 
that I could bring myself to be an apologist of the slavery ex- 
isting in the South. Neither can I forget that, in reply to this 
question, I told him I was not in favor of slavery, but was de 
voted to the Union ; and that, as the Union involved the slavery 
he condemned, I had to accept the latter to befriend and serve 
the former. 

National unity, national greatness, the blending of several in- 
terests and races with one great power, require many sacrifices 
of opinion, and, it often times has happened, the toleration of 
grievous errors themselves ; whilst generous impluses, enlight- 
ened views, the broader and loftier ideas and plans of govern- 
ment and society, have to be suppressed or modified. 

Society itself — even in the household, the narrowest sphere 
in which it is presented — is held together, rendered harmonious* 
useful, happy, and beneficent, by similar compromises, by the 
like forbearance, by the subjection of individual tastes and am- 
bition to certain general regulations, which preserve and govern 
it as a unit. 

O'Connell declared himself willing to have Catholic disabili- 
ties (struck off by the Irish Parliament in 1793) re-imposed, pro- 
vided that the Irish Parliament were restored, and Ireland set 
thus again on the footing of an independent nation. The first 
speech he made was made memorable by this declaration. The 
patriotism of it was never questioned. It did much for his fame. 
He detested the bigotry which had placed those disabilities on 
the statute-book. He would have had the Irish Catholic, so far 
as the law and the government were concerned, the unrestricted 
and perfect equal of the Irish Protestant. 

But the independence, and, with it and through it, the pros- 
perity and eminence of Ireland, as a self-ruled and self sustained 
nation, was dearer to him, and the more comprehensive and 
nobler object of his aspirations aud great efforts. 

In the same spirit was it that the Irish-born citizens of the 
United States assented to the slavery existing in the South, sub- 
mitting, without complaint or remonstrance, to this anomaly in 
the Republic, to the end that these vast States should consoli- 
date, and be one and indivisible ! What their love aud ambi- 
tion for the country of their adoption prompted, their oath of 



citizenship enforced. They had either to accept the Constitu- 
tion, from which that country derived its national functions and 
authority, in all its parts, and in its complete integrity — with 
all its imperfections as well as with all its excellencies — or else 
stand aloof as aliens, availing themselves, it is true, of the lib- 
eral advantages it bounteously offered, but contributing no- 
thing to its political security and growth — the foundation and 
framework on which, and within which, its marvellous activity 
and enterprise were set in motion, and its consequence and re- 
nown, spreading themselves year by year abroad, were reared. 

So long as the South, notwithstanding its very peculiar 
institution, remained faithful to the National compact — submit- 
ting to the majority, when the majority asserted themselves 
legitimately in elections which varied the magistracy or general 
policy of the Nation, and yielding its duty and good faith to 
the central authority — not an Irishman invested with the 
franchise, or otherwise possessed of any political influence, 
would have cast a vote or uttered a word to disparage or 
endanger the rights of property to which the South specially 
laid claim, and which, indeed, were not so much a concession 
under the Constitution, as a vital inheritance, without the 
recognition of which there would have been no Union. 

Breaking the compact, however, setting at defiance the le- 
gally expressed decision of the majority, as it did in the case of 
the last Presidential election — forcibly seizing the National 
property — the first to proceed to hostilities — laying siege to and 
reducing the National forts — compelling the National Govern- 
ment to call forth the military power of the people — plunging 
the country into a gulf of blood, and almost overwhelming it 
with taxation — laying waste the commerce of the loyal States 
wherever its buccaneering ships discovered it on the high seas 
— every citizen who looked upou the slavery existing in the 
South as a flagrant inconsistency and a mischievous error in the 
political system, if it was not, as some pronounced it to be, a 
most odious and pernicious violation of the moral code, felt 
released from his obligation to tolerate what his humanity and 
conscience had long condemned. 

The annihilation of slavery in the South, however, was not 
the primary, nor, indeed, the remote or ulterior object of the 



5 

war which the National Government was driven to wage 
against traitors and insurrectionists of the South. At first, and 
for some time, this war was prosecuted with the single purpose 
of reinstating National authority wherever it had been deposed, 
of recovering the National property wherever it had been 
seized, and compelling the observance of that good faith to the 
trustees and administrators of the National domain and revenues 
— the condition on which the National protection was afforded, 
the National resources applied, aud the National prestige 
extended to every member, State, or Territory of the Union. 

But, as the war went on, new developments occurred ; and 
amongst these, the emancipation of the slaves in the revolted 
States became a military necessity, which none but the rebels 
in arms, or the meaner and more malignant rebels in conspiracy 
with them at the North, were found unwilling to admit. Thus 
the inexorable logic of war compels the justice which fidelity 
to the Constitution solemnly withheld, and the rebellion of the 
South emancipated all true He publicans from their complicity 
with an ordained system of bondage, which, as I have said 
before, was not only in conflict with their humanity aud 
conscience, but falsified the spirit, and neutralized the glory of 
a Republic, which otherwise was unexceptionable and incom- 
parable. 

Thus purified from slavery, theNational boundaries and prop- 
erty reclaimed, the National authority re-established, the Na- 
tional flag flying proudly from every wall and mast from which 
it has been dragged down, the Republic of the United States 
will be reconstructed, and in its reformation will be stronger, 
worthier, nobler, than ever. All the blood, all the treasures, 
all the agony it has cost to preserve it from the fate of Mexico, 
will render it the more valuable and irresistible in the future ; 
and, admonished by the recollection of the perils into which it 
was plunged by the ambition of those who would have divided 
it for their own aggrandisement and splendor, the politicians, as 
well as public men of a higher stamp, will be careful to avoid 
a recurrence to those exasperating practices from which the 
Disunionists furnished themselves with the only arguments that 
seemed to justify their treason. There will be a sounder, man- 
lier and fairer life thenceforth — a life of justice, courage and 



dignity, instead of a life of bickering, corruption, scheming 
and vulgarity as heretofore — visible and dominant in all public 
places, from the Ward Committee-room to the Halls of Con- 
gress. 

I need not say to you, it will ever be to me a kindling recol- 
lection, that, at the head of my noble little Brigade, I have stood 
true, on many a fiercely fire-swept field, to the Government of 
the United States, and all it represents and holds in trust. The 
basest of the base would we have been, had we stood by and 
seen, without emotion, without a blush, without striking a blow 
to save it, that munificent and gracious Government, despoiled, 
crippled, shorn of half its consequence, of the dutifulness and 
homage due to it, and made the laughing-stock of the slave- 
owners and cattle-breeders of Europe generally, and Ireland in 
particular. Thank God ! that disgrace has been averted from 
our race by the splendid conduct of the thousands of Irish sol- 
diers who have been the life, the heart, the soul of the Federal 
armies ; and who, in upholding with their storng arms the 
honor and authority of the Government, to which, on ceasing 
to be exiles and becoming citizens, they swore allegiance, 
proved themselves worthier of a better and brighter destiny than 
that which has, for a winter of centuries, shrouded the land of 
their birth in a dense mist of misery and humiliation — the most 
woeful and death-like that ever darkened the hopes and memo- 
ries of of a nation. 

"With sincere regard and friendship, believe me, my dear 
Roche, always to remain most faithfully yours, 

THOMAS FRANCIS MEAGHER. 



To the Editor of the Dublin Irishman : 

New York, September 5, 18G3. 
My Dear Sir, — You will readily acknowledge how difficult it 
was for me to write to you whilst I was in the field. Being 
constantly occupied with the duties of my command, I had 
little or no time left me for anything else. You, who have 
known me long and intimately, and can make the fullest allow- 



ances for what those, who do not know me so well, would 
ascribe to thoughtlessness and indifference, will generously for- 
give my silence. 

I sincerely assure you this silence was most painful to me, for 
I was extremely desirous of thanking you, in the name of my noble 
little Brigade, and all true Irishmen, in and out of the army, 
for the energetic fidelity, and the strength of the arguments and 
illustrations, with which you vindicated the Government of the 
United States in its great effort to put down the insurrection of the 
slave-holding aristocracy of the South. It was cheering, indeed, 
to find you standing foremost amongst those few intelligent, 
grateful, and upright men, who in Ireland recognized the just- 
ice and grandeur of the National cause, and the military pro- 
ceedings it became necessary to resort to in its defense. That the 
conduct of others, who thought and acted otherwise, was a 
sourse of the deepest mortification, you will easily comprehend. 
The sentiments and disposition of the Irish public — so far as 
speeches and newspapers can be taken to interpret them truth- 
fully — in regard to that cause, and the action of our Govern- 
ment, were not such as the loyal citizens of this Republic had 
reason to expect. 

That the expression of them hurt us essentially, or in any 
grievous measure, it would, of course, be absurd of me to say. 
Ireland, most unfortunately, has been so humiliatingly reduced 
as a political power, that her sympathies and opinion, whether 
for good or evil, exercise no influence of any sensible force on 
the policy or fate of other nations. Nevertheless, where an 
intelligent appreciation of the rights and duties of our Govern- 
ment — a clear conception of the unjustafiable and wanton char- 
acter of the Southern insurrection — and hearty good wishes for 
the success of the National arms, in the contest into which they 
were compelled — were naturally looked for, it was with a feel- 
ing of sore and somewhat scornful disappointment that the 
partisanship of the Irish public with the aristocrats of Carolina 
and Virginia was regarded here. This unnatural partisanship 
has done more harm to Ireland than, in the present circumstan- 
ces of Ireland, it could possibly do to the United States, and 
the claims and authority the National armies are in the field to 
assert. 



8 

You know there has been, ever since the time that Mr. Rufns 
King was sent from Washington as Minister to England, a party 
in this country, inveterately prejudiced against all foreigners, 
and especially so against the Irish. You know, too, how impo- 
tent this party has proved to be in every attempt made by it to 
exclude the objects of its prejudice and hostility from a due and 
full participation in the rights, immunities, liberties, and public 
honors of the Republic. You know that all the offensive de- 
clamation it indulged in at different times, all the secret or 
more flagrant combinations it formed, all the distrust, jealousy, 
and rancor it excited, signally failed to obtain the sanction of 
any Administration, or any Congress, or any statesman or po- 
litician of positive note, to the legalized disparagement and dis- 
qualification of the foreign-born portion of the population in any 
vital, or even in any trivial particular. The liberal and lofty 
spirit animating the laws and institutions — the frank and hos- 
pitable nature of the people born of the soil — the history of their 
origin and triumph as a powerful commonwealth — all forbade 
and repelled the pitiful intolerance which would convert the 
accidents of birth and lineage into disheartening and crippling 
disqualifications. 

The mischief resulting to Ireland from her attitude in rela- 
tion to the Government of this country, in its conflict with the 
slave-masters of the South, will develop itself in the new argu- 
ment it furnishes the bigots to whom I have referred, and who 
revive with every incident or event which directly, or by im- 
plication, serves as a foundation for their charges of disaffection 
against those thousands of emigrants who make sail for these 
shores in search of fairer play for their industry, a friendlier 
society, and a happier home. The identification of the Irish 
people at home with the Orangemen and Tories of England in 
their avowed sympathy and active connivance with the Rebels 
in aid of whom the shipwrights of Glasgow and Birkenhead 
launch a buccaneering fleet on the high seas, whilst their saucy 
representatives in Parliament urge an audacious intervention 
— this identification, so far as it has been indicated by the edit- 
ors and orators of Dublin, Cork, and other places, will not be 
forgotten by the jealous exclusionists of this country when the 
war is over. Nay, it may be difficult hereafter to rouse some 



9 . 

of the staunch old friends of the Irish people, and kindle anew 
in them the fire with which they battled for their rights in 
former times, when they remember how, even in the very sea- 
son when the loyal States were pouring their grain and gold 
into Ireland to relieve its starving poor, the public opinion of 
Ireland, announced through these organs, went forth to con- 
demn the action of the National Government, and approve the 
infidelity and usurpations of its enemies. 

I am ready to acknowledge — for I feel convinced — that, in 
some instances, this opinion has been at fault, owing to sheer 
ignorance or misconception of the object aimed at by the 
Southern politicians and the forces they have organized. The 
generous heart of Ireland is ever prompt to sympathize with 
the efforts of a people in arms to strike down an oppressive 
mastership and establish their independence. Restless for 
centuries with the hope and passionate desire to see the like 
great end attained in Ireland, that heart finds some relief for its 
burning fever in the delight and thorough joyousness which the 
approach of other nations to liberty inspires. Hence its con- 
gratulations when the colonies of Spain broke loose and hurled 
the viceroys and all the other stipendaries of Madrid headlong 
from the Andes. Hence its bonfires and hymns of gladness 
when the noble workmen and chivalrous young students 
planted once again the Tricolor of the Republic on the palaces 
as well as on the barricades of Paris, and, with sublime visions 
and aspirations, dedicated France, for a third time, to the reign 
of the people and the service of humanity. Hence, to-day, the 
eagerness with which the splendid heroism of Poland is followed 
from one field of battle to another, and the offerings which go 
forth, on the wings of a sister spirit, to sustain the holy war 
against the Muscovite. Hence, in fine, the sympathy of Ireland 
in the instances I have excepted with the revolutionists of the 
South, and the strauge ^identification with the mischievous and 
malignant sentiment and activity of England against the 
Federal Governmet, of several honest men who hate the very 
name of England, and, if they could compass it by their deaths, 
would wrench her, root and branch from the seas, and free the 
world for ever of her. 

In such instances, with such men, sympathy with the disloyal 



• 10 

States of the American Union is the error of generous natures 
inflamed with the love of liberty and an intense hatred of op- 
pression. A wild error, truly, since it confounds the conspiracy 
and outbreak of a lawless ambition and lust of power, with the 
struggles for equal laws, fair play, the God-given rights of con- 
science, national life and position, an unfettered manhood. 
He who confounds these two enterprises — the one of lawless 
ambition and lust of power with the one of the down-trod- 
den against the despot, and conscience against the persecutor — 
would confound a mutiny and massacre on ship-board with the 
fidelity and bravery that beats off the pirate or swerves her 
from the breakers. He would plant the statues of Cataline and 
Cicero on the same pedestal in the Senate, and despatch the 
faithful and the false in the one fiery chariot to heaven together. 
It would be difficult, indeed, for the most eager or reckless 
partisan of the Southern insurrection to assimilate it with any 
one of those righteous and heroic uprisings I have referred to, 
or identify the former with the latter, in any one instance, or in 
any one essential particular. Not one act of injustice justifies 
it. Not one. Mr. Stephens, the Vice-President of the Confed- 
ercy, in that virtuous and glorious speech of his, in which he 
besought and warned his native State of Georgia not to follow the 
example of South Carolina, which had just passed in Conven- 
tion the ordinance of Secession, unequivocally and emphatically 
declared that no wrong, threat, actual or probable usurpation of 
the Federal Government and Congress could be invoked to jus- 
tify the withdrawal of the Slave States from the Union. The Gov- 
ernor of Florida, at the same time, said the same thing. So did 
the Governor of Georgia, who presided at the meeting at which 
Mr. Stephens spoke. The fact is, as you well know, the vast 
majority of the people, North and South, ever have most 
scrupulously and sensitively guarded the reserved and special 
rights of the South. They have done so with the most sterling 
and stern fidelity, doing violence to their own great instincts, 
and in defiance of the sarcasms and scurrility their rigid 
observance of good faith with the South drew down upon them 
from the hypocrites of Exeter Hall, and the reproaches of the 
honest npostles of human liberty in the more truthful and 
chivalrous parts of Europe. In a word, the political power 



11 

of the North and West stood as a wall of granite between the 
South and the New England neophytes and crusaders of 
Exeter Hall, and that wall was never stronger and loftier 
than the very day that Mr. Lincoln was elected President. 
A positive majority, pledged to stand by the South and repel 
every encroachment on its peculiar rights, was returned to 
Congress at the same election. No apprehension, therefore, of 
injustice could be rationally entertained by the South, at that 
time, even for a moment. 

True it is, laws and resolutions, in contradiction of the 
rights claimed by and guaranteed to the South under the 
Constitution, had been passed in the legislatures of "Wis- 
consin and Massachusetts, and decisions of the Supreme 
Courts of two or three of the Northern and Western States 
were in conflict with the obvious requirements of certain 
special enactments of Congress — the Fugitive Slave Bill for 
example. But in all these instances the authority of Congress 
overtopped the authority of the States, and the resolutions, de- 
cisions, and laws in question, offensive and faithless as they 
seemed to be to the South, had no more effect than so many 
soap-bubbles blown in its face. In no instance, under 
no Administration, whether Whig or Democrat, were the 
claims and rights of the South ever compromised or 
overborne. You remember the little Yankee brig in which 
I came to New York in 1852, from Pernambuco ? The year 
before, she had brought back, to his master in Savannah, the 
runaway slave Simms, despite of all the rampant rhetoric of 
Wendell Phillips, and the seditions excitement he, and others 
like him, had kindled on the occasion of the unfortunate slave 
being arrested in Boston by the officers of the Federal Govern- 
ment. The plain truth of the matter is, fidelity to the South 
was a more vehement passion with the North than the love of 
gain, the love of adventure, the love of liberty itself. For the 
sake of maintaining the National unity, and the Constitution in 
which it was framed, the North became nothing less than the 
obsequious vassal of the South, and seemed to hold every 
interest in the country subordinate to that of the Plantations. 
Hence, for fully half a century and more, it was the South that 
held the White House, and controlled, if it did not monopolize, 



12 

the Government. Hence, in fine, the irritability of the South 
when the Democratic party was ousted by the Kepublicans, 
and a new order of men proceeded to take possession of the 
Capital. 

This transfer of power was too much for them to bear with 
equanimity and the cheerful resignation of good citizens. They 
had been the dominant party, and must remain so — if not in 
the Union, why then, out of it, and spite of it. What ! they, 
the courtly and sumptuous lords of the rice swamps and cot- 
ton-fields, the inheritors of the blood of the Huguenots and 
Cavaliers, give way for four years to the lanky and marrowless 
heirs of those beggarly outcasts of Pilgrims ! South Carolina 
cannot submit to that — she must set up for herself. Georgia 
and Alabama agree with her ; and then the rest of them that 
live, and grow sleek and haughty, on the sweat of the black 
skin, and propagate their own rare blood for the auction block, 
the branding-iron, the lash, and all the noisomeness of a 
brutal bondage. Sift it to the bottom — sift and probe it in 
every direction — and you will find that the conspiracy and out- 
break of the South against the Union is the conspiracy and 
outbreak of insolent pretension, lawless ambition and lust of 
power, as I have already said, and nothing more, if anything 
could be worse. 

An anecdote sometimes is worth a volume of history and 
logic. Here is one that displays broadly, in the clearest light, 
the purpose and character of the Southern rebellion. 

The month of August immediately preceding the election of 
Mr. Lincoln, Mr. Toombs and Mr. Cobb, of Georgia — both well 
and widely known, abroad as well as at home, as politicians of 
considerable influence and ability, and as accomplished gentle- 
men occupying high social as well as high political position in 
the South — paid a visit to New York. A day or two after their 
arrival, they dined with a gentleman you are familiar with, and 
who wields extraordinary power, whilst occupying a singularly 
conspicuous position as a public man. I give you his name in 
a private note ; for, although he told me the circumstances I am 
now relating without any reservation whatever, and without in- 
timating in the least that the information was confidential, I do not 
feel myself at liberty to introduce his name in this letter, which is 



13 

destined to find its way into your columns I presume, in case 
neither an iceberg nor an iron-clad buccaneer from Birkenhead 
overhauls it on the ocean. 

"Well, at the dinner referred to, in reply to the protests of this 
gentleman against the avowed determination of the South to se- 
cede, in the event of Mr. Lincoln being made President, Mr. 
Toombs declared that the South should never remain a day in 
the Union under a Republican administration, since the accept- 
ance of such an administration would repuhlicanize the slave 
States. 

" Why not wait for some overt act of Mr. Lincoln against the 
South — something positive and tangible, to justify your asser- 
tions that it will be a government of sectionalism and encroach- 
ment, and that it will disregard and set at nought the obligations 
imposed upon it by the Constitution ?" 

" That," Mr. Toombs replied, " is what we cannot afford to 
do. It would be fatal to the South, as a political power based 
upon slavery, to permit the experiment. Should we recognize 
Mr. Lincoln as our President, and suffer him to exercise autho- 
rity in the slave States, he would very soon build up in them a 
Republican party by his dispensation of the Federal patronage. 
He would have, of course, to appoint, from those who elected 
him, Collectors of the Port, Custom-house Officers, District At- 
torneys, United States Marshals, Postmasters and Mail Agents, 
and every one of these officers would at once become Republi- 
cans, if they were not Republicans before, and a multitude of 
subordinates would swell the list in no time. Thus the political 
identity of the South would be destroyed. A party, more or less 
hostile to slavery, would grow and spread itself amongst us, 
and the South could never again hope to have the undivided sway 
it had." 

In other words, the aristocrats of the South — the Masons, 
Cobbs, Hunters, Slidells, Prestons, and Breckinridges — would 
have to relinquish their monopoly of Washington, and take a 
fair chance, in the contention for public honors and the magis- 
tracy of the nation, with their less patrician fellow-citizens of 
the North and West. Rather than submit to this, they must 
set up a Republic for themselves, in which they may rest as- 
sured of an undisturbed enjoyment of official power, and pro- 



14 

long far into the autumn of their days their midsummer delights 
of statesmanship and diplomacy. And for this — to realize this 
selfish and insatiable ambition — they draw the sword across the 
National domain — seize the National forts and ships — plunder 
the custom houses, sub-treasuries, and arsenals — reject and 
violate the national flag — tear asunder the Republic with 
violent hands, and proceed to erect a hostile Government upon 
a fragment of it, amid the cheers, of course, of all their friends 
across the water. Think what a catalogue and folio of selfish- 
ness, greediness of notoriety and dominion, rapacity, treachery, 
irreverence, and abandonment of all that was most sacred and 
imperative in the past, recklessness of all that was most prom- 
ising and inspiring in the opening vistas of the future, this 
Southern coup cVetat sufficed to publish to the world ! No 
wonder that it has had the sympathies of the imperial parvenu, 
whose eagles leave their unfinished work in Italy, where they 
were promised a full swoop from the Adriatic to the Alps, to 
whet their beaks and plume themselves anew, high up amid the 
sun-blaze, on the torn entrails of poor Mexico. No wonder 
that it has had the backing of that old Tory monarchy, whose 
magnificent rival on the seas it promised to cut down to a 
manageable size, and the example and inspiration of whose 
liberal government, improved code of public law, system of 
political action, and ever-accumulating estate, presented so un- 
safe and overshadowing a contrast to the hereditary burthens, 
the stingy franchises, the domination of privileged classes, the 
monopolized lands, the surfeited Church Establishment, and all 
the other gilt and bloated follies, nuisances, boasts, and false- 
hoods over which the lion and the unicorn rampantly keep 
guard. 

Thank God ! there have been thousands of Irishmen in New 
York, in Massachusetts, in Ohio, in Pennsylvania, in Illinois, 
Indiana, Vermont, and Maine, to rescue the Irish name from 
the disgrace of being involved in the infamous scheme to rend 
asunder, and reduce to the condition of an unstable and the 
proportions of an inferior power, that great beneficent nation 
which has been for eighty years and upwards, the sanctuary 
and renovation of the improverished and oppressed of Europe. 
I say nothing against the Irishmen who have fought under Lee 



15 

and Beauregard. It is hard for men of generous and warm 
natures to break away from the associations in which they find 
themselves at such a crisis as a civil war, and sternly do their 
dut}' in spite of their social relations and affections, and the 
influences which the chosen scene of their labors, their home, 
their friends, and their success, naturally and powerfully exercise. 
But without writing one offensive or unkind word in allusion 
to them — and 1 have never done so once in all I have written 
and spoken about the war — I turn with pride and exultation to 
those of our race who stood true to the Government of the 
United States, and in the vindication of its honor and preroga- 
tives pledged the fire of their hearts and the vigor of their arms. 
If it was a noble exploit to plant and consolidate this govern- 
ment, it is, surely, an undertaking deserving of equal, if not 
greater, praise, applause, and benediction, to defend and pre- 
serve it to the last. I shall not prolong this letter to vindicate, 
on behalf of the Irish soldiers in the Federal armies, a course 
of action which their impartial intelligence dictated, their 
gratitude prompted, their love of genuine liberty inspired, their 
clear sense of justice sanctified, their oaths of citizenship enforce. 
In the honored graves in which many of them sleep to-day they 
are not on trial for their loyalty and heroism. Their services 
and devotion, their willing self-sacrifice and death in the blaze 
of battle, left them high above the arguments of the living 
crowd, investing them with a glory which no criticism should 
be suffered to approach, and from which no criticism, however 
presumptuous, can detract. Believe me to be, with sincere re- 
gard, your faithful and affection friend, 

THOMAS FRANCIS MEAGHER. 

To P. J. Smyth, Esq., 

Editor of the Irishman, Dublin. 



The Loyal Publication Society lias already issued a large 
number of Slips and Pamphlets which, have been widely cir- 
culated. Amongst the most important are the following : 

No. 1 Future of the North West, by Robert Bale Owen. 
2. Echo from the Army. 
' >. Union Mass Meeting, Speeches of Brady, Van Buren, dec. 

4. Three Voices: the Soldier, Farmer and Poet. 

5. Voices from the Army. 

6. Northern True Men. 

7. Speech of Major-General Butler. 

8. Separation ; War without End. Ed. Laboulaye. 

9. The Venom and the Antidote. 

10. A few words in behalf of the Loyal Women of the United 

States, by One of Themselves. 

11. No Failure for the North. Atlantic Monthly . 

12. Address to King Cotton. Eugene Pelletan. 

13. How a Free People conduct a long War. Stille. 

14. The Preservation of the Union, a National Economic Necessity. 

15. Elements of Discords in Secessia, &c, &c. 

16. No Party now, but all for, our Country. Francis Lieber. 

17. The Cause of the War. Col. Charles Anderson. 

IS. Opinions of the early Presidents and of the Fathers of the 

Republic upon Slavery, and upon Negroes as Men and Soldiers. 

19. (£inf)eit unb .fmljeit, con Hermann U after. 

20. Military Despotism ! Suspension of the Habeas Corpus 1 &c. 

21. Letter addressed to the Opera-House Meeting, Cincinnati, 

by Col. Charles Anderson. 

22. Emancipation is Peace. By Robert Dale Owen. 

23. Letter of Peter Cooper on Slave Emancipation. 

24. Patriotism. Sermon by the Rev. Jos. Fransioli, of St. Peter's 

(Catholic) Church, Brooklyn. 

25. The Conditions of Reconstruction, by Robert Bale Oiccn. 

26. Letter to the President, by Gen. A. J. Hamilton, of Texas. 

27. Nullification and Compromise : a Retrospective View. 

28. The Death of Slavery. Letter from Peter Cooper to Gov. Seymour. 

29. Slavery Plantations and the Yeomanry. By Francis Lieber. 

30. Rebel Conditions of Peace. 

31. Address of the Loyal Leagues. 

32. War Power of the President — Summary Imprisonment — 

by J. Heermans. 

33. The Two Ways of Treason. 

34. The Monroe Doctrine, by Edward Everett, &c. 

35. The Arguments of Secessionists. 

36. Prophecy and Fulfilment. Letter of A. II. Stephens — Address of 

E. W. Gantt. 

37. How the South Rejected Compromise, &c. 

38. Letters on our National Struggle. By Brigadier. General Thomas 

Francis Meagher. 



Loyal Leagues, Clubs, or individuals may obtain any of onr 
Publications at the cost price, by application to the Executive 
Committee, or by calling at the .Rooms of the Society, No. 863 
Broadway, where all information may be obtained relating to 
the Society. • ' 

)W60 If 




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